


for the hope of it all

by brandnewsoul



Category: Teenage Love Triangle Series - Taylor Swift (Song Cycle), folklore - Taylor Swift (Album)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:01:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28142037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brandnewsoul/pseuds/brandnewsoul
Summary: Aggie makes a decision that, against her better judgement, makes her reconsider.
Relationships: James/narrator of August, betty/james
Comments: 3
Kudos: 8
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	for the hope of it all

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pepa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pepa/gifts).



Aggie's not a nice girl. Not nice in the way that counts, the way that brings praise for your poise or guarantees that your boyfriend's mother's disappointment when you break up with him. She's the kind of nice that allows adults to completely overlook her, the kind that's quiet and dignified when the occasion calls for it.  


This makes it all the more perfect when James comes skulking out of the side door, tie askew and the night shading his glow. Aggie had seen the prelude to this moment: Betty fulfilling her Old Hollywood fantasy of dancing cheek to cheek, only with the wrong leading man. The expression on James's face is still the same: eyes burning in anger, lips trembling on the verge of tears. It only changes when he looks up as Aggie whistles at him.

"Hey, you," she says, "Get in the car."

The street behind the high school is paved with cobblestones, some holdover from when the town was closer to a village. Aggie's dad told her this, a hand me down story from his mother, from her father, back when horse drawn carriages and trolleys were a thing. Her car bump-bump-bumps along the way 'til she turns the corner and blows through the stop sign, all the better to put the distance between them and that scene.  


"You alright?" she asks.

James opens his mouth only for nothing to come out. His gaze is fixed on the horizon speeding by, houses gone blurry as Aggie approaches the highway. She turns the volume up on the radio and he doesn't object or protest. She rolls all the windows down and her ears pop at the pressure change. James keeps quiet.

Until she takes the on ramp and he yells, "Where are you going?" over the rush of the wind.

Aggie's eyes flit to his profile. "Where do you want to go?" she asks.

#

Betty leaves for the mountains the next morning. She spends every summer there with her aunt. Aggie knows this because for a while, she dreaded Betty's departures after the last day of school. They were friends, after all. Up until fourth grade Betty lived a block behind Aggie, and while they weren't friendship bracelets tight, they enjoyed each other's presence at the least. Then fifth grade arrived and puberty began to wreak havoc on Aggie. With the training bra and growth spurt came attention enough to drown in.  


Luckily, Aggie was a good swimmer.  


Betty stopped inviting her to parties after that. She and most of the other girls became wary. Aggie's mom told her that they were jealous but they'd come around.

They never did. And Aggie began to envision herself as a mermaid.

#

"Here?"

"You want to walk home, Wonder Boy?" Aggie's tempted to kick him out. Yeah, Honey's is a hole in the wall, but it's in the next town over and they have the best sand dollar pancakes on the eastern seaboard. She glares at James, who has the nerve to look disgusted at the sight of the fluorescent lights blinking over their heads.

He doesn't say anything after her scolding. Just shoves his hands into his pants pockets and hesitates before going to hold the door open for her.

Aggie feels slightly uncomfortable. Men hold doors for her all the time. Men old enough to be her grandfather, who tip their heads and smile sweetly; men old enough to be her father, who check her out with a gleam in their eyes that makes her want to scratch their eyes out. The boys she sees don't hold the door, as a general rule. She's not sure if that says something about them or the way that they see her.

They take a booth and a waiter with cornrows drops the laminated menus down. She notes the way that James flips the pages, wincing as his fingers meet the sticky pages. "I haven't been here since I was nine," he says. "We were coming back from a trip to the city and I told my mom I was hungry and she asked if I wanted French toast."

"You still like French toast?" Aggie asks.

He nods.  


In the yellow-white inside of the diner, he's more relaxed but he still sticks out. Pale eyed and dark-haired, with a kind of solemnity that makes him seem trustworthy. He's Betty's handsome shadow, this shrinking violet of a boy. Aggie's glad she plucked him. Even if the word  _ opportunist _ blinks electric in the back of her mind.  


They start hanging out after that. First those little jaunts out to Honey's. Then it's roaming around the flea market, because James needs help finding a birthday present for his great-aunt, the one who lives in that duplex near Main Street with all the wind chimes hanging from her trees. The adults in their stalls seem familiar with them and regard Aggie with curiosity and the occasional cocked eyebrow.  


Before leaving with a stained glass contraption with silver flutes the width of drinking straws, they make a stop at a pretzel stand. The woman at the counter beams when she notices James. "You have a new girlfriend, Jamie?" she asks.

Aggie ignores the flutter in her chest at the question. Fights the urge to grasp James's right hand, the one reaching into his pocket for the crumpled bills inside. Shrugs when he says, "Aggie's just a friend. Helping me get a present for Aunt Lou."

The woman nods but her eyes narrow as she looks Aggie's way. There's a network of fine lines at the corners, even under the umber powder she probably uses to cover them. "Well. Tell Lou I said hi, then."

(If James does, Aggie doesn't know. She never gets invited to the party and that's fine.)  
  


#  
  


Two weeks later Aggie's mother says, "There's a letter for you" with a touch of a smile. "It looks like someone just put it in the mailbox. It's on your bed."

The envelope's on her comforter, bright yellow against the royal blue. TO AUGUSTA's scrawled on the front in large, loopy cursive. Aggie rips it open and a baby pink note card falls out with only one word in red on it: SLUT. She only picks it up to study the writing, only confirming her suspicion. This is Inez's handiwork. Only she would be this passive aggressive, nosing around where she doesn't need to be.  
  
It's pathetic. Sad.  


She still goes to the movies with James that night. Their town's small but not so small that they don't have a multi screen theater with five dollar blockbusters on Tuesday nights. Inez and her brat pack are present, shooting daggers at Aggie as she goes to get the snacks while James scouts out seats.  


_ Sad  _ is robin's egg blue to her, twisted in the same girlie hand that Inez writes in. Aggie's not a nice girl but at least she knows she's not completely to blame. James got in her car on his own, after all.  


The movie's a found footage horror show, packed with kids from school. The air conditioning feels like a cool caress against her shoulders, one that's chased by the warmth of James's hand between her shoulder blades. They touch when they're alone, holding hands sometimes and casual brushes, but the stroke of his thumb against the base of her hairline runs electric through her. For a second she wonders if he does (did) this to Betty and the current stops.  


Until he moves that same hand down, twining his fingers with hers before he kisses the back of her hand.

"I like you," he says, soft and a little raspy. If she looks close enough, even in the violet-black of the theater light, Aggie thinks he might be blushing.  


She's not, but she feels as if she's aflame.

#

It's Friday, mere days after the hand kiss that made Aggie feel like some repressed English lady with a bonnet. She kissed James in the car that night before dropping him off, and when he asks if she'd like to go to the beach, she texts back  _ uh, yeah _ though she wants to type it in screaming dandelion yellow.  


The beach is barren. The sky is a flat gray and the thermometer in the car says it's seventy-four. No matter. She chases James along the shoreline, shrieking when the water sweeps across her flip-flops. "It's not that bad!" he shouts at her.  


"It's freezing!" she says back. She knows the sting will fade, that she'll stop noticing soon enough, but if she protests enough James will want to drag her back to the towels they laid out. Maybe he'll wrap her in his hoodie, and she can pretend this is something she's always done. It's a strange sensation, this prickly feeling that arises in her in moments like this.  


_ Longing.  _ It's gray as the sky above her, an uncertain, beautiful thing that she can't make heads or tails of. 

#

Saturday night, she goes to James's house.

He's alone. His mom's a nurse and works night shift; his dad's doing his once-a-month National Guard thing. His room's basement level, cozy and worn in. His hoodie's hanging off the back of his desk chair, and Aggie's sure that if she leans close, she could smell the sea salt embedded in its fibers.

James looks nervous, even though he's the one who invited her over. "Did you…" he asks, and he tugs at the neckline of his t-shirt like it's suffocating him. "Are you sure?"

Her throat feels tight. She nods. "You?"

"Yeah." He approaches her tentatively. "Um, can I ask you something?"

"Like what?" The room is slightly warmer than she likes, and a box fan's whirring in the background.  


"I mean…" His mouth draws into a thin line. "Just… I just wanna let you know that it doesn't matter if…"

Aggie crosses her arms. "You believe everything everyone says about me?"

He steps forward. The corners of his mouth tug down, and he gently takes her hand. A shiver runs through her, despite the stagnant warmth of the air. "Hey, wait. No."

"I haven't before." Tears prick at the corner of her eyes. The timing was never right. One boy's lips were horrifically chapped. One boy's parents came home early. Last summer, out on the beach, there was the boy who didn't care that sand getting in crevasses was a thing. It's one thing to let someone feel you up, and another to want to be comfortable and want the other person you're with to make you feel safe. "Okay?"

"Me either," James says.

It nearly knocks the wind out of her. "But you—"  
  
_ And Betty  _ hangs in the air, like the twinkling remnants of firecrackers being set off outside.  


James shakes his head.  


Hours later, when she drives home, Aggie wishes she'd bothered to ask why not. Maybe it's all Betty, being certain that sex is so monumental that it should be saved for occasions that you commemorate with greeting cards. Or maybe she and James decided to wait to see if they made it through the end of high school before taking that particular leap. Or it was all him. After all, James is intensity on a low boil, cautious and hesitant and well meaning.

Of course she doesn't consider this in the moment. Because the night is long, and the silence of the neighborhood is punctured with the pop-pop-pop of fireworks. And James kisses her with intent, touches her like he's holding something sacred. Somehow, through his fumbling, he presses his fingers into her. Aggie gasps and swears that she sees a streak of pink flame behind her screwed shut eyes.

#

The rest of July is sublime.  


Aggie loves the word. Imagines it in filigreed gold with green accents. Her mornings are solitary, left to reading in her room or going to the neighborhood pool to avoid the mommy groups. Around lunch James usually messages her and time accelerates.  


It's a lot of time doing nothing, really. He tries to teach her how to skateboard and she falls off and into a fire ant nest. They go to the beach and stay until the sun goes low. They ride bikes to the ice cream stand, and if they weren't ending at least half of those nights by going back to Aggie's house to fall in bed, it would be disgustingly wholesome.

While the days are bright, night brings uncertainty. The kind that keeps Aggie awake, admiring the span of James's back as he curls under a thin fleece blanket. He laughs at her jokes, but there are moments when the punchline sails right over his pretty head. He's not stupid, just distracted. After all, Betty will be back in a week, and then what?

It would be so easy to ask him what comes next. Just not when he's in her arms, or when they're enjoying the afterglow. Or when they're arguing over whether rocky road or chocolate chip cookie dough is the better ice cream flavor, or when James tells her that  _ Jaws _ was based on something real that happened in the 1900s and sharks really aren't that scary or…

Aggie doesn't have to ask. She knows how this story ends.

#

She imagines taking the long way to school on the first day. Seeing James waiting to catch the bus because he sideswiped a car during his road test and it's the main reason why he's the only senior waiting alongside the freshmen and sophomores. Honking like she did that night at the dance and shouting, "Hey, James, get in."

She imagines the glares, the insults from the other girls, and Betty's sad eyes. She wouldn't respond, just roll her eyes and will James to be bold enough to push her against the wall near the library to kiss her in front of everyone.

She doesn't, of course. Mostly because she wakes up too late to think of anything except the essentials: brushing her teeth, combing her hair, and making sure that she's actually dressed. Somehow Aggie manages to slide into homeroom a second before the late bell rings and it's only when she notices who's in the seat in front of her that her fantasies flash back to mind.  


She pokes him in the shoulder. "Nice to see you, Wonder Boy."

No reply. Just his shoulders tensing.

It could just be the hunger creeping in; after all, she didn't have time to get breakfast. The gnawing ache in Aggie's stomach feels worse than simple hunger, though. It reaches its peak by third period when Betty strolls into chemistry, looking both fresh faced and horribly dour at once.  


Aggie stares at her phone, feigning indifference until a shadow hangs over her. She's so certain of everything in her world, of how she looks and what people think of her. But in this moment dread clings to her, and she feels vaguely sick.

"Why?" is all Betty says, and somehow she doesn't sound accusatory or angry. It's almost pitying.

Not saying anything would mean being read as shameless. Aggie takes a deep breath before she looks up and into Betty's eyes. "Because he let me."

#

The final days of summer are smothered into submission by a cold front. The whole school goes from tees and shorts to hoodies and jeans overnight. Then the rain comes: first, from the fragments of a hurricane and then on its own.  


Betty's birthday is on the twenty-first, and her friends greet her in the cafeteria with that old Earth, Wind, & Fire song playing on Inez's phone. Aggie watches them from the corner of her eye before twisting to look over her shoulder at James. He never stays in the caf for longer than he needs, just long enough to get his food and go sit on the patio in the open air. Even with the weather like this.  But today, he lingers at the end of the line. It's a solemn echo of his moment from all those months ago, the sadness and shame in his eyes apparent.  


It makes Aggie's heart ache.

She's not a nice girl, because being nice is thankless and doesn't count for anything except cushioning yourself from the blows of life. And even then, no matter how nice you are, somebody comes along and fucks it up for you.  


But just because she's not nice, it doesn't mean that she can't do a favor for someone.

_ Helpful _ is so understated. It's the milky white of an egg, an essential sort of word. Aggie waits for the windows to defog and steels herself as she approaches the curb. A handful of underclassmen are there, half with umbrellas and the other half crowded under the narrow overhang. James is the tallest of the bunch with umbrellas. He startles some when she honks the horn.  


"You need a ride?" she shouts to him.  


He has the nerve to look offended. Aggie understands why, but hell, she's offering a chance to get out of the rain and to be away from the indignity of being the oldest one on the bus by choice. But James relents, and soon he's in her passenger seat, sullen and silent.

"You know about the party, right?" she says.

"I'm not going with you," he says.  


"This isn't so I can go with you."  _ Even though I want to. _ She squeezes the steering wheel 'til her fingers ache. "I'll drop you off."

"What?"

"At Betty's. But first, you should probably change. And get her flowers or something." She avoids the street behind the school, steering toward the main road and away from anything that reminds her of the Before. That's what this thing with James is now: a Before and After.  


"Why?" he asks.

She wishes she had an easy answer. Or something poetic, or something that wouldn't feel as exhausting as everything she can't bring herself to say.  


"Because," she says. "Just because."

**Author's Note:**

> I have to admit, besides taking inspiration from the three songs from folklore, I went into writing this story with a few other songs in mind. First, August Moon by Sara Bareilles (the title was originally going to be "Ten Feet From Your Door"). Then I was going to frame it around the concept of How You Get the Girl by Taylor but went against it, opting for a deep dive into August's narrator's POV. The more I thought and wrote, Talk of the Town by The Pretenders also jumped in there and (very briefly) Criminal by Fiona Apple. 
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy! Happy Yuletide, friend.


End file.
